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Finally, the White House Features Comment on Pepper Spray attacks against Protesters

Today, the White House has broken its silence regarding pepper spray attacks against peaceful protesters — but it isn’t what you might think. No, your President Barack Obama still has not uttered a word in response to the widespread and unprovoked use of pepperspray as an instrument of pain and torment to force Americans to stop protesting and go away.

Regardless, today a search of the entire White House website for “pepper spray” — featuring press conferences, statements, actions, transcripts of interviews, official memoranda, and other documents of the executive branch — leads to one result.

It’s a petition introduced by a visitor, someone from Norfolk Virginia who’s asking Barack Obama to say something, anything about the attacks against dissenting Americans in the name of authority. Anita C petitions:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
condemn the use of tear gas and pepper spray (and other chemical weapons) on peaceful protesters in the United States.
The use of violence in response to peaceful protest is an affront to our civil rights as American citizens.

President Obama has already eloquently spoken out against the use of violence on peaceful protesters during the Arab Spring. He continues to condemn various governments for the same. We call on the President to condemn the use of physical violence and intimidation, including the use of pepper spray, tear gas and the LRAD here in the United States.

Currently, these and other military techniques are being used around the country on peaceful citizens who are exercising their constitutional right to assemble as part of the Occupy movement.

The President and his office have remained silent regarding the violence perpetrated at this events, including Oakland, UC Davis and elsewhere.

And that’s the closest to White House action on pepper spray attacks that we’ve gotten. Is that as close as we’re ever going to get?

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About the authorJim Cook

I haven't been everywhere, but I've lived lots of places in the USA: the North, the South, the East, the West, and places in between. Every place I've been, I've seen acts large and small of kindness, callousness and disregard. Here we are. What will we do?

3 thoughts on“Finally, the White House Features Comment on Pepper Spray attacks against Protesters”

It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.